


A Rising Tide

by gleamingandwholeanddeadly (something_safe)



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Series - All Media Types
Genre: Bottom!Hannibal, Curtain Fic, First Time, First Time Bottoming, Hannibal and Will being cute and cuddly, M/M, Murder Husbands, Post TWOTL, Post-Fall, domestic fic, sleepy morning handjobs, sleepy morning sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 14:08:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13572180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/something_safe/pseuds/gleamingandwholeanddeadly
Summary: Sleepy, nostalgic talks in a bedroom the same colour as the ocean. Hannibal reflects on how close he feels to Will. Will wouldn't mind getting even closer.OR: Cuddles, unnecessarily florid banter, and graphic morning sex.





	A Rising Tide

**Author's Note:**

> I was in a real bad rut and the lovely [Shukkhy](http://shukkhy.tumblr.com) sent me a very sweet prompt and it really helped me get out of my funk. Working on this mellow bit of writing has really helped me out, so thanks, flower! I hope you like it <3 
> 
> This is set in the same universe as my other Post Fall fic, but has a slightly different energy to it, so I thought I'd give it it's own page. 
> 
> The prompt was:  
>  _"My little prompt if you would like to write it, I kinda just want Will and Hannibal spooning with Hannibal being the little spoon. Important is just that they are now after the fall fully healed and in a romantic and sexual relationship and Will just full on pours the love on Hannibal. Hannibal is touch-starved after three years in prison and Will just enjoys being as close as he can and can’t keep his hands off Hannibal. They can be clothed or not, can lead to sex or not, whatever you like but please some sweet TLC and Hannibal basking in it."_

Rain rolls against the windows in whispering, blustered waves. It bounces from the skylight in fat droplets, rolling downward as Hannibal watches. The dawn sky is still inky blue, swelling with grey light on the horizon beneath the bank of clouds. Through the main windows, he sees that they nearly touch the trees, trailing midst over the reaching fingers of black branches. Spring is starting to kiss the frozen earth, awakening grasses and moss that had been in slumber for the biting Winter. Hannibal breathes in, and the cool damp scent is there, under heavy warmth.

He shifts minutely, blinking away sleep. The navy walls of their room make him think of the bottom of the cold ocean again, but Will is a shrouding warmth against his back, one arm slung over his middle, his knees slotted against Hannibal’s calves. It’s rare they’re so entwined- usually nightmares separate them in the night. Today, though, Hannibal can feel Will’s breath on his back, his cheek resting against his nape.

Indulging as easily as he ever does, Hannibal folds his hands gently against Will’s arm over his stomach. He allows himself to close his eyes and commit the feeling to memory: the scent of the rain, and Will’s skin against his.

Eventually, Will stirs, ever-attuned to Hannibal’s wakefulness. He makes sleepy, content noises for a second, and Hannibal savours those, too.

“Morning,” Will croaks, after a second, “sleep okay?”

Hannibal thinks about it and smiles a bit.

“I did. And you?”

“Yeah, actually.” Will sounds as surprised as Hannibal feels, shifting a bit against his back. He hums again. “This is nice.”

“It is nice.” Hannibal agrees. The admittance makes him thoughtful, then.

“What is it?” Will asks, noting his quiet tension. Hannibal isn’t quite sure how to answer, initially. He takes a breath.

“I suppose I never realised how important physical contact was to me until I had to go without it for three years. The only times I was touched were when I was restrained.”

Will answers with silence, but his arm tightens minutely over Hannibal’s waist, fingers skimming the scar low on his belly. His other arm slides under Hannibal’s neck. He sighs into his skin.

“I thought about that a lot,” he says eventually.

“I’m surprised,” Hannibal admits.

“Are you? You were the person who touched me the most before you went on the run. When I was incarcerated, it was all I could remember of being touched. You used to handle me a lot.”

“I still do,” Hannibal chimes in. Will huffs a laugh.

“Yeah- but I mean. Back then, I wasn’t always aware of it. I had dreams which I knew were memories: you stroking my hair, and my back, and comforting me. It became almost Pavlovian to me. I think it’s why I wasn’t afraid, even when I knew you were going to hurt me. I didn’t associate your touch with fear, even though I should.”

“A farmer has a similar relationship with his livestock. He cares for his animals; nurtures and feeds them with the same hand that slits their throats. An animal that smells the blood of its fellows will still go to the hands that have nurtured it since birth.”

“It’s not as romantic when you put it like that, Hannibal.” Will gives him a warning little squeeze. Hannibal laughs.

“I apologise.”

“No, it’s me that should apologise,” Will murmurs. His lips brush the space below Hannibal’s ear, arms gently tightening around him. “I knew what prison would do to you. I knew you’d have to live in your imagination. I just… couldn’t play the game like that, anymore. I needed to change the rules.”

Hannibal feels thoroughly encapsulated in Will’s scent and warmth; his rare strength. It’s novel enough that it takes him by surprise, and he arches into it in answer, humming. Will’s calf slides against his, their skin hot. He’s touching Hannibal like he can’t bear to let go.

“I would certainly say you won,” Hannibal murmurs, when he remembers how to talk again.

“I don’t know if it’s winning if you surrender.”

“Arguably, it was due to your outmanoeuvring me that I had to defer.”

“Is that a fancy way of saying you were so floored by me telling you to leave me alone that you didn’t know what else to do?”

“The thought of you being able to cut me out so easily was very distressing to me.”

Kissing gently, Will’s mouth is at his ear again, barely a whisper. “Surely you knew that wasn’t true.”

“But it was spoken aloud, and in some measure, it had to be. I initially had every intention of respecting your wishes.”

“What changed?” His hands are starting a steady path, smoothing over Hannibal’s skin, up his chest and then down again to his stomach. It feels so unexpectedly good that Hannibal restrains a sound.

“I watched you through your window.”

“And what did you see?” Will croons, palm skating up to Hannibal’s throat again, nonthreatening and gentle. Hannibal’s eyes close.

“You. And you were weeping.”

Will’s hand stills for a moment. All of him does.

“That’s when I knew I couldn’t go,” Hannibal continues, quietly, “I had pushed you too far, so many times, but you had never told me to leave. I didn’t believe that you were sincere in your desire to never see me again- just that you wanted to punish me for what I had done to you.”

“So you put yourself in prison,” Will says, tone soft with understanding, “so I could see that you were being punished?”

“I knew that your relationship with good and evil was still routed in your ideals as a police man. If I were behind bars, serving time, you would regain the upper hand in the relationship, and you would forgive yourself all your folly.”

“You say all this with the benefit of hindsight,” Will says, dryly now, “I doubt you really had me mapped out so easily then.”

“Maybe my thoughts hadn’t solidified. So often they must be compressed to yield anything meaningful, like diamonds.”

“Or coal,” Will adds. Hannibal smirks a bit.

“You know how to irritate me now, don’t you Will?” He says, a touch accusing, as Will starts to pepper more kisses against his throat again.

“The result of many years of study,” Will replies, “if I go too risky, things get lethal. If I hold my tongue, you think you’ve won.”

“Trust me, I know I never had a chance at winning.”

He gets nothing but a hum in response, Will’s hands still stroking him, his lips drifting to the back of his neck. Hannibal can feel himself warming with lazy arousal, stoked by the awareness of Will’s cock filling out beneath his shorts where he’s pressed against Hannibal.

“Was it so bad, losing to me?” Will asks eventually, shifting closer to eliminate the space between them, his free hand sliding over Hannibal’s hips.

“You know I never want to be anywhere but where you want me,” Hannibal says, honestly. He’s gratified by Will’s little noise of pleasure.

“I know,” he promises Hannibal, softly, “And you know I only want you near me.” The feeling of his hands on his skin is so intimate that Hannibal can’t imagine for a moment how he existed without it. He cranes his chin up with the guiding touch of Will’s fingers, and Will kisses his lips, sweet and unrushed but with an unmistakable hunger.

“I love you, you know,” he murmurs, stroking Hannibal’s hair back from his temples with gentle fingers, “I never used to understand how I could crave you so deeply. Until I saw that you craved, too.”

Hannibal’s breath catches at the admittance. Will usually disguises his feelings when speaking, making Hannibal work them out himself- or else, he conceals them entirely. This raw honesty is a side of Will he’s rarely seen since he first had him as a patient.

“I wanted to eat you,” Hannibal tells him, twisting a bit in Will’s arms, fingering the edges of the crescent-shaped scar on his shoulder: a bite mark. “Sometimes I still do.”

“I know.” Will gives him that smile, smug and grateful all at once. “I think one day you will.”

“I could carry you with me, always,” Hannibal muses.

“Like Mischa,” Will breathes. Hannibal feels speared by the heat inside him, ignited almost entirely by the tone of Will’s voice and the dark fan of his lashes. He’d find the mention of Mischa uncouth if he didn’t know it came from a place of deep understanding.

Will’s fingers are creeping down again, skimming over the rising arch of Hannibal’s cock through his shorts, shaping him gently with his palm. Failing to stifle his soft, pleased noise, Hannibal arches his hips, thighs parting, and gasps when Will’s motions solidify into more meaningful strokes.

“Did you think about this while you were in prison?” He asks softly, the weight of his other hand a hot outline on Hannibal’s chest.

“I don’t truly believe I thought this was an option,” Hannibal admits, “my fantasies of you were often more prosaic.”

“Tell me about them, then.” Will slips his hand inside Hannibal’s shorts, tunnelling his fingers to stroke in short movements, maddeningly slow.

“I thought about cooking you dinner. Making the bed. Things we do every day now.”

“That’s not all.”

His hand tightens, and Hannibal huffs a breath. “I thought about conversations. Telling you things I’d never told anyone before. I examined the reasons for these compulsions. I have seldom had them before.”

“But you have.”

“Yes…”

Will’s lips smear damp against the junction of his shoulder; several small kisses. “Who?”

“My aunt, Murasaki.”

“You wanted her to understand you, and accept you, just as you are.”

“Yes.” Hannibal lets his breath hitch again as Will smears his thumb over his cockhead, spreading the fluid building there.

“Did you?” He asks.

“I did try,” Hannibal says, voice roughening with Will’s ministrations, “but she did not reciprocate my desire to remain close.”

“Her loss,” Will breathes.

“Mine too.”

“My gain.”

“I don’t regret it now,” Hannibal continues, “I know now that she could not give me what you have given me.”

Will’s hand stalls, just for a moment, in time with his breaths. He resumes with a kiss against Hannibal’s jaw.

“Maybe not.”

“Certainly not. She was a quite different creature than you are.”

“What kind of creature am I?” He tightens the circle of his fingers, hips rocking minutely, encouraging.

“My kind,” Hannibal breathes, arching helplessly, “the kind with a taste for butchery. Your appetite is admittedly less than mine, but more prolific in other ways.”

“What ways?”

“You can love the worst in me. You feel no revulsion, not once you understand.”

“Sometimes there’s a long gap between knowing and understanding.”

“You always- come through.” Hannibal stutters on a spasm of pleasure that makes his hips snatch forward. Will gives his cock an answering squeeze, stroking precome out of him, wiping it up over the crown as it dribbles down his shaft, slicking the path of his hand.

“I always want to understand you,” Will gasps, his own voice shot, motions of his hands still excruciatingly steady. “God, Hannibal, I love you. I love this. It’s not healthy, it’s not right, but I want it.”

“Right for everyone else doesn’t mean wrong for us.”

“It doesn’t feel wrong. It feels the best thing I could ever want.” Will turns his face against Hannibal’s neck, his hips still grinding, the weight of his cock rising between Hannibal’s thighs enough to make his own cock pulse again with want.

“Will,” he breathes, bridging, his voice slurred where his brain struggles to contain the shape of his words in his usual pristine accent, “you can-”

“Yeah?”

“Please.”

They only pull apart fractionally for Will to retrieve a tube from the bedside drawer.  He slides Hannibal’s shorts down around his thighs to let him kick them the rest of the way and just touches him again for a long moment, one hand tweaking at his nipples, the unpinned hand drifting down to his cock again before he draws them back and snaps open the tube. Hannibal shivers at his cool, slippery touch, stroking over his balls before nudging behind and stroking at his opening. He shifts as well as he can to accommodate it, biting his lip as Will eases in with one.

He’s not as light-handed as he was before: Hannibal’s body won’t allow for it.

“Easy,” Will murmurs.

“It’s been- quite a while.”

“Me too. I got you.”

Hannibal believes him. He puts his hand over Will’s on his chest and turns his face half into the pillow as Will prepares him, first stroking in faster with one finger before adding another, twisting and pressing gently. Hannibal feels himself starting to yield, and Will must too, because he feeds in a third finger with a slide firm enough that Hannibal groans.

“Yeah?” Will asks. He’s exploring now, more confident, fingers starting to make sweeping, beckoning motions that make Hannibal’s cock pulse and his breath catch.

Swearing, Will keeps it up, adding more lube until Hannibal feels it all over; feels Will fucking him so slick and easy with his fingers that Hannibal gets the absurd motion he’s gone too far- but then he grunts and pulls away and the blunt, hot press of his cock is such a welcome stretch that Hannibal grips at Will over his shoulder.

He pauses. “Okay?”

“Perfectly,” Hannibal nods, “I want more.”

Will nods against his nape, hips rolling forward. His cock feels like the perfect invasion, deep heat, and Hannibal clenches and arches to make space for him; to take him to the base.

“Fuck, Hannibal,” Will breathes, “I don’t know how slow I can go, you feel so good.”

“Don’t go slow, I can take it,” Hannibal promises. Will shifts minutely over him, his weight bearing him down into the mattress, cock sliding deeper, breath against Hannibal’s ear. Where his hand spreads on the mattress, Hannibal takes it, twisting until the pressure is perfect all over. He lets out a shivering breath. “Yes, Will, good.”

“Yeah.” Through gritted teeth.

Will knows what to do. He fucks Hannibal like they’ve done it a million times; like he’s catalogued every one of Hannibal’s desires and knows them by rote. He thrusts in long, sharp circles, fast and then slower, deeper, making them both gasp. Hannibal lets himself come apart beneath him, helpless to do anything but feel and hear and scent Will making him his. He groans at his teeth in his shoulder, a firm scrape, followed by kisses and the scratch of his stubble. His cock aches where he’s pressed half to the sheets, smearing wet onto the cotton. He doesn’t touch; doesn’t want to. This feels too good, Will inside him, nudging that spot that makes him feel over-sensitized and desperate all at once. He’s suspended like that for so long he feels half-blinded by it, just encompassed by Will, Will, Will.

His hand curls under Hannibal’s shoulder, gripping them together, his cheek pressing to Hannibal’s.

“Can’t believe how close it feels- it’s different.”

“I agree- though I’ve never found our usual arrangement to be lacking.”

“Me neither, trust me.” Will gives a strained laugh, pulling back just a smidge, slowing his motions. Hannibal feels his forehead against his back and thinks he might be watching.

“How does it look?” He asks. He can imagine, but Will’s voice is perfect like this.

“God, so good. Sheets so dark it looks like we’re the only thing in the room. The light on your skin, from the windows. You’re… spectacular. We look like a dream I’ve had.”

“A painting,” Hannibal murmurs.

“A sculpture,” Will corrects. Hannibal sees it, light shining through marble shaved so thin it’s translucent. He likes the thought of them suspended like this, him a subject of supplication, Will, divine above him.

“Will,” he breathes, “I want to feel you finish inside me. Let me?”

“Fuck- of course,” Will nods, like Hannibal knew he would. He resumes his pace from before, more fractured now, the pressure of his weight pushing Hannibal’s belly to the mattress, hips in the air. The action strikes Hannibal like a hot iron, and he exclaims. Will only concentrates his efforts in answer, breaths becoming fast and ragged. His nails dig into the meat of Hannibal’s shoulder again.

“Fuck- you feel- I’m-”

Close. Hannibal can smell it, deep heat and primal need. Will is a different person like this, honest and self-indulgent. He’s sometimes ashamed afterward, but Hannibal has never found it to be distasteful.  Quite the opposite.

He grips Will in return, grasping at his hair over his shoulder, pushing up the fraction that he can with his hips, cock rubbing heavy against the sheets once more.

“You can. I want it.” He reaffirms it gently.

Groaning against his back, Will’s hips drive faster, their skin making wet, sordid sounds. The angle shifts as he starts to fuck hard and erratic through his climax. The drag of his cock against his prostate makes Hannibal choke on another sound of need, again and again. It’s unexpected, the ferocity of it, and Hannibal clenches down, feels Will’s shocked gasp against his skin as he locks up with orgasm, shooting in long smears against the sheets with a groan. Will’s hand finds him; strokes the last few shivers out of him with a whine.

“Hannibal… you…”

He can hardly respond. Hannibal feels stretched to his limit, thoroughly fucked, blissfully empty for the minute of anything but Will.

He’s still clutching him, he realises, when he feels his fingers gently flex against his chest. Reluctantly, he releases him. Will kisses his ear, and his cheek, and finally his mouth. Without a word, he pulls back, easing away from Hannibal and slipping out of bed to take care of the aftermath. He cleans them both up gently with a hot washcloth and then slips back into bed when it’s in the laundry hamper. They’ll have to change the sheets, Hannibal muses idly, as Will fits up against him once more, fingers resuming their idle search over his skin.

They lie in silence for a while, naked and pale, the sweat cooling on their skin. Hannibal searches Will’s skin too, where he’s pressed to him, and commits the warm heave of his chest and his cock softening against the back of Hannibal’s thigh to memory.

The light has shifted. Morning has brought a few weak rays of sunshine, bleeding through the minute holes in the snow-covered skylight.

Eventually, Hannibal turns over, arranging himself inside the negative spaces of Will’s body, some parts overlapping. Will’s arms tangle around him, firm muscle and smooth skin, occasionally scarred.

“Will.”

“Mm?” He sounds on the verge of sleep. Hannibal can’t exactly blame him.

“I want to tell you… that if you had any doubt about me… know that I will never put this at risk by choice. You are more precious to me than I ever thought myself capable.”

Not asleep now. He meets Hannibal’s eyes with his own, so pale in the sun spots that they put Hannibal in mind of glacier water.

“Neither will I,” he says, voice barely a whisper, “I promise you. You’re a part of me.”

Hannibal swallows at the honesty. “Conjoined.”

“Conjoined,” Will affirms. He leans in to kiss him, long and sweet. Hannibal pulls the sheets up around them against the gathering cold.


End file.
